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Sunday, 18 January 2015

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Threats for airplanes in flight

The baffling series of aircraft tragedies in 2014 compels us to believe that the previous year and the year ahead bode ill for flights. An airplane in the air is naturally beset with multiple challenges - the extreme weather conditions and technical defects being the most prominent.

What is the typical structure of an airplane? There are many types of aircraft in use today, for military, private, commercial and recreational purposes. Helicopters and planes are heavier - than air aircraft which need blades to keep them in the air.

Security

Most aircraft have a fuselage (central body) with wings near the middle and a smaller tail plane and a fin at the back. Straight wings operate best for carrying heavy loads at low speed but swept-back wings offer an ideal air flow for fast flying.

In all respects, civil airline service is the paramount mode of transport which unconditionally guarantees the safety of the airborne passengers and goods.

Thus, the aircraft is equipped with all devices and strategies to safeguard the passengers and their luggage from the very airport to their destinations.

Here, special precautions are taken to prepare the airplane for a safe flight and to ensure the perfect security for the passengers and their goods. However, recent air crashes show that unexpected weather conditions (most often the effect of thick fog) and technical defects have been responsible for air tragedies.

The airport personnel ensures the safety of the air crew by fortifying the security of the air port through exclusive inspection work by the particular airline. The airline inspects the immigration and emigration, the passengers' documents and even launch awareness programs for the air crew.

Engineers

Furthermore, the special team of engineers from the particular airline stay poised to make a thorough inspection of the technical aspects of the particular aircraft. The engineers test the airplane according to the basic rules given by the maintenance control manual recommended by National Airliner Institution.

The engineers, pilots, airliner staff, and control room officers play a major role in making the proper arrangements until the airplane arrives at the Passenger Terminal. They are fastidiously cautious of the proper operation of the plane and ensure that nothing goes amiss while the plane flies in the high skies.

All this is to avert any possibility of air catastrophe or at least to minimise the effects of an air crash.

Dangers

In spite of all these precautionary measures against any plane crash, it is inevitable that the tragic truth - the dismal reality in the high skies at an unexpected moment accounts for the loss of many lives.

The possible causes for plane crashes are detrimental weather conditions, technical defects, terrorist activities, and chiefly important, the animal interference and unexpected objects in the air.

According to the conclusions by IATA and ICAO, a plane crash generally occurs once in 1.4 million flights in the case of a technically flawless plane.

Animals

Strangely enough, an air plane is substantially disturbed by birds inflight which strike violently on the plane either while the plane is moving in the air or while it has landed on the airport. This is a serious challenge fir flights though the case sounds uncommon.

The danger of a plane crash has been proved to be high when flying birds hit on the plane while it takes off or lands or flies at a lower level of height. As civil airline services and related institutions analyse, such a collision damages the aircraft and kills the bird or any animal on the spot.

The birds hitting on the moving plane is definitely a grave problem. Frequently birds strike on a plane when it moves at a lower height or when the pilot generates higher power to take the plane to a higher elevation. Even while the plane prepares to land on an airport, the threat of birds striking on any part of the plane becomes high. When the birds flying towards the plane strike on the engine, the engine might malfunction or fail to maintain the desired power for the plane.

The highest number of accidents related to animal collision has been caused by the birds hitting on the engine. In such an instance, the pilot is forced to cancel the flight or to land on a nearby airport to prevent any risk of plane crash. However, the danger is high when the bird hits the blades of the engine which may get damaged to the extent of a disaster.

Unfortunately, any airplane carries possibility of being destroyed by unforeseen agents in spite of assurances of technical perfection at the airport.

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